Saturday, February 11, 2006

Taxes and Food

Less eating out due to taxes?
TAXES
Taxes in any form or name is never never welcomed. What is the purpose of taxes? The quick answer would be to get funds for maintaining public service - service the roads, finance the police and the military, fund the civil service and in general provide public service. This is where your taxes go would be the maxim. Another purpose may be to distribute the wealth. There has and there will always be an imbalance of wealth in society; And there will always be the poor. You can never alleviate poverty, but what you can do is to redistribute the wealth.
The inability to do so would be catastrophic. Unless you can redistribute the wealth then there will be problems, to put it slightly. In one of the Ancient Greek States the problem became so terrible that debtors slashed the throat of creditors in a single day. And in the Roman Empire the most hated figures were not the Roman Legions but the tax collectors. These were the people who were immediately killed whenever Rome lost a city to an enemy.
Revolutions all revolutions result in the redistribution of wealth. But unfortunately in time one sees the re-accumulation of wealth within within a few people. In Ancient Rome things were solved with conscription of enemies of th state - losers in the political battle. Of course not all of it were given to the public, a number were killed for their silver and gold. As long as part of the wealth was used to provide bread and salt to Roman Citizens everything was fine. Thus, a portion of it went to the people, the rest went to the coffers of the victors. There were two conscription in Ancient Rome's history the first by Sulla and the second by Mark Anthony, Octavian and Lepidus. This redistribution also served another chilly purpose it provided a means for those who won to further weaken the position of enemies and potential rivals. This method was used often by a Chinese Emperor to control the ambition of his generals, often asking his generals to build magnificent palaces, buildings, and bridges; limiting his generals' financial capacity to mount a grab for power. So here it is the other uses of taxation:

Redistribution of wealth

Conscription of enemies

Stabilization of the the State

Ideally, taxes should then be limited to the monied class or the plutocracy. Those who have excessive amounts of money, really excessive amounts of money.
FOOD
Where does food come in the picture of taxation? Well it seems that
there are fewer punters to restaurants today. Could it be due to the increased taxes or is it just a pre-Valentine hiatus? And is the mini-sizing of food items also an affect of the tax.
Only time will tell, probably. In the meantime the old Tagalog proverb

Kung maikli ang kumot dapat matutong yumuko

In English

If the only blanket one receives is short one must learn to fit into it

4 Comments:

Paying taxes is an obligation but this is subject to moral laws. We give to the State what is due to the State.

The State has to render the basic requirements for human dignity to people. What seems to be happening is that with the higher taxes (on average the prices of basic commodities have risen by 2 to 3 pesos), people have begun to cut down on food and for the aged and ill, medicines. This is something to be concerned about. I know because lately some people have asked me for urgent help.

Mrs Arroyo should take heed. You may have a short blanket, but you can curl up only to an extent. What Mrs Arroyo seems to be demanding is for people to cut off their legs!

Blackshama,I hesitate to mention moral law whenever I write because moral law is relative and individualistic. Paying taxes is one of the facts between the state and the individual, a social contract. We pay taxes to the State so that they can enforce the law that prevents one person from arbitrarily killing his neighbor or dumping its part of the contract.

The State in order to survive has to guarantee stability and keep things in harmony, relatively. It does this by redistributing wealth. The imposition of taxes should be on luxury items, those that rich continually to buy.

I am quite aware of the concern for the increase in prices and the demand to remedy them on the national level. However, on the individual level what one could do is to learn to be frugal. Be more productive and economise one's spending: home cooked food over restaurant food, basic neccessities over the new cellphone, eat more healthier food than the expensive food, make use of what the governmment offers, do not encourage mendicancy, so on and so forth.

It is quite easy, at some point an opiate, to criticize the tax or the tax collector. This will be remedied on the national level. I think what would be more productive is to deal with it first at your level. Instead of saying pronouncements that at best seem to be emotional rhetoric.